Beyond Alpha Centauri: Discussion Thread

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by kassiopeia
Anyone heard of the Bussard collector (or Ramscoop)? It's famous from the Star Trek series.
It's a device that collects interstellar matter so that, primely the hydrogen free there, can be perused as fuel.
My point: Could we have it as accepted technology? I was thinking the new dreadnaught of the Coalition Navy could have a (experimental?) Bussard collector to increase operational range.

LMP has mentioned this. Up until now, it has been mostly a Pirate tech since they have no real fixed home ports that are out in the open. I don't see why anyone couldnt be researching it or even have working prototypes.

This leads me to my next question.

Planetary shields. I always thought that these were a tremendous advantage that Star wars had. I was going to write up a piece about the Spartans researching this. They will find out that it is possible but requires tremoundous amounts of energy and many large installations on the surface to generate. It would however be possible to shield small areas of a planet forceing attackers to actually land on a planet to take it like the Morgans did. If not someone could simply destroy important cities on the surface with their fleet and move on. Any thoughts on this? I think we all have orbital defenses around our planets, but once those are gone, the attacker sits up there and reduces your cities to ashes. This can be important in the future when someone tries to take a planet.

[Frankychan]

Sprayber,

Ok, I'll postpone the Hive ambassador's arrival until you let me know that it's ok to post. Just a reminder, the ambassador will arrive outside Spartan space and inside the neutral zone that buffers our two territories.

Plantary Shields

As for planetary shielding, I kind of like that idea. I was thinking that since Hive facilities are underground, only these area's will be protected under the shield. Hive planets and installations within designated Hive space are protected by stationary defense platforms and cloaked mine's.

So, Hive planets are enveloped by mines, weapon platforms and orbital satellites, but the planets themselves are littered with area's that an invading force can land on them. A grid is set up where areas with shielding are protected by more cloak mines and less platforms/satellites, whereas non-shielded area's are protected by more stationary platform's and less mines. So that if an invading force destroys these platforms, they have a relative clear-shot at landing on the planet (just trying to create weaknesses in the Hive defenses).

But getting back to the point, I think planetary shielding is a feasible idea. Just so long as there is a way to penetrate the shields whether by continuous bombardment, sabotage, or ground-based forces launching an attack head on.

BTW--->I think that the Hive planetary shields should be slightly weaker than everyone else's because their cities are below ground and are better protected by orbital bombardment/invasion.

[Sprayber]

like I said. It is a distant opportunity to have full planerary shields. Local shields for cities or military bases would be possible though. This would only protect from orbital bombardment. Ground attack would have to be defended the old fashioned way. troops against troops. and veichles

Ramscoops only work for the Pirates because it converts space matter into Antimatter for the Chiron FTL.... but COalition uses a Sol FTL, powered by Elerium-115 or whatever... so i can't how a ramscoop would work unless they make a Antimatter powered FTL...but the you would need the techs to make Antimatter cheaply like the Morganites and rest of the Chironians.

frank, it would depend on which clan your contacting and depends on the deal.... if you contact the Kane, or the wolverines in general... then, depending of the deal, can have the Pirates help out, depending............ Pirates doesn't generally know where Hive territory is.. but knows which area...... can say some past Pirate incursions in that area dissapeared :P so they generally avoid that area...... Pirates mainly among the Spartan, Drones, Morganites, Peacekeeper, University, etc... spaces.

If you want to play with shields of any kind, then it would be possible to have shields for ships.......... and i don't want shields for ships, because it makes combat lot more interesting........ may have some prototypes


anyway, g2g...........

-LMP

[Kassiopeia]

I really would not care with shields. At least on ships.
I designed the outlook of the Coalition ships with this in mind.

One could regulate the shields however, if they must be taken into play. It would have to require _tremendous_ amounts of energy, and be only placed on, say, the capitol of Sparta Prime for example. Or on the top of Geneva, though I doubt the tech would be at the Coalition's reach.

You see, my ship designs have what one of my friends would call "box symptom". This is how he used to call my space ships built of legos

This design is very bulky. It has *some* sleekness, but it looks more like a Borg cube then the Akira class in Star Trek.

First of all, the Star Trek ship type with a saucer, attached to a central structure with warp nacelles protruding from it is, if not constructed of very resilient and/or shock-absorpant materials, hazardous.

If the shielding fails, the ship can be easily taken down by a few shots in to critical areas, like the bridge. Any fairly good alien tactical officer would know where to place the shots to blow the bridge apart. Stupid, because the bridge location does not have to be visible, it could be inside the central structure without hindering effectiveness like in the Battlecruiser in BC3000AD.

Then there is the Star Destroyer sort in Star Wars. But that model's bridge is also very vulnerable to destruction, not to mention the docking port below which is almost asking for a torpedo or two.

These two ship types have been designed to rely on energy or deflector shields, which IMO at least when looking at scifi flicks are much too easy to bring down

So the Coalition ships have the central command, the bridge, where the captain and the navigation officers reside, is within the ship, and they have a very thick layer of armour.

Originally posted by [LordLMP]
Ramscoops only work for the Pirates because it converts space matter into Antimatter for the Chiron FTL.... but COalition uses a Sol FTL, powered by Elerium-115 or whatever... so i can't how a ramscoop would work unless they make a Antimatter powered FTL...but the you would need the techs to make Antimatter cheaply like the Morganites and rest of the Chironians.

Then what I had in mind is not a "Ramscoop", at least in Pirate sense. Maybe not calling the Sol one a "Ramscoop" or a "Bussard Collector" would make things simpler to understand.

This system spreads a magnetic field infront of the ship, as a sail or a fishing net. (This idea is from the book Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, and in there it's called a "Bussard collector".)

The sail is hit with interstellar hydrogen, which is directed to the fuel tanks for converting to energy for sublight drives or water.

It's at best when collecting released hydrogen of destroyed ships or from the upper layers of a planet's atmosphere.

So this has nothing to do with an Antimatter FTL drive.

It just uses a collection method as the Pirate ships but the processing of gathered matter differs.
And it's experimental, so you won't see it common on Earth ships, just the Solaris class dreadnaught.

I got some good pictures of Narn crusiers if you would like them. as well as a schematic of the star furies.

Gimme gimme gimme!
Put them trough on email, a.helin@phpoint.net , and if they are enormous, please zip them if possible. Or you could provide a link.

[Cybergod]

The story is posted! Kass, you could include the broadcast from Titan, made by Nicholas Popullos in your future posts! PLZ!

Misc things:

* Has anyone ever mentioned this project to the one of the administrators? This really shouldbe in the Apolyton News! At least to keep that section of the news with the living...

* We could make SMAC/AX factions out of this project! This would 1) determine what your faction has and doesn't to everyone 2) make it available for you to test tactics (miniscully - on Planet) against your opponents! Of course I am not sure hive, Spartans or morgan would change much

my 2 pennies

[Frankychan]

LMP,

I was thinking either Kane, or one of the more "sleazier" pirate clans that don't mind getting their hands bloody. I was thinking that Yang would first contact Kane (since he is the big chief) but if Kane declines-then Yang would probably seek out the more devious clans.

As for offers that the G.H.E. would offer...maybe supplies that the Pirate "Confederation" might need---food stuff's, light weaponry, armor, medical supplies. Or maybe even design spec's for capital ships....whatever that you think would be appropriate since I don't know how you picture the Pirate social structure and living conditions should be.

For communication purposes, how would Hive personnel get into contact with Pirate representatives?

Shields

One thought that i came upon while reading the diverse technologies that each nation/faction/empire/coalition has is that each factions technology differs somewhat than anothers. Chironian FTL is different from Sol FTL for example.

What I propose is that some factons have shields and other do not. Instead of shields, how about ablative armor, reinforced hulls, or simply no shields at all? For the Hive ships, I see them as having no shields, reinforced hulls, or ablative armor--depending on what type of ship it is. The Hive uses stealth and surprise as well as superior numbers instead of well armored or "high-tech" ships. That way, each of our chosen factions remain slightly different from one another but at the same time preventing one faction from dominating the rest.

[Silence]

Hi sorry for being inactive for a while,

I had an idea for my faction, I am slighty baseing my faction off the Friendlys from Childe Cycle by Gordon R. Dickson. Where they make money as mercianries.

So I was thinking would anybody want some to buy some Soliders of God for ground operations and that.

grrrrr, dislike missing words..... What I wanted to say is, I AM AGAINST Shields for starships.... because it makes combat seem lot LESS interesting. hey, Babylon 5 ships survive pretty well without shields :P

-LMP

a religious merceneries? for money? what religion do they believe in? since i have never read the book, i don't know...... if you want religious merceneries.... who have a small or medium size Pirate clan that is mostly comprise of crazy believer undesirables along with others which survives by doing some mercenary work.... i rather not see to many mercenaries groups as at the moment, i don't see much need of them except for simply escorting, raiding others, bounty hunting type mission, garrison, and etc..... depends on the what the mercenary group focuses upon.... Ground Warfare or Space Warfare or whatever.

-LMP

[Sprayber]

I'm talking about shields for planets. Or least for certain parts of planets. a shielding device would be too energy restrictive to put on even a large ship. Besides, Spartan ship hulls are made out of energy displacing materials. Very hush, hush stuff we developed with the Morgans and Drones. I even metioned it in my timeline way back when.

Silance, I belive the spartans will be interested in some of your soldiers for god. Since the dirty hiverians have went looking for pirate mercs.


Kass: I will put those pictures on my page and provide you the site. just take what you want. I'll put a little surprise on there i think you might like. I read somewhere you had a certain other ship from B5.

Again, it depends on the tasks the hive proposes... if it involves committing atrocities, Kane will decline, so will most of the dominant of the clans who currently following Kane and his Wolverines and because they are not into atrocities....... they may be called Pirates. but they generally still have a honor system that as no structure :P if it is a dirty mission may attract the Larionov Clan, the worse among the pirates or the Blood Eagles, which is almost just as bad, but with lot more discipline.

I could see University and the Cyborgs have some early primitive shields....which is why it is bit hard to raid their ships, if you see any outside of their territory. Cyborgs claim Lalande 21128, yet they don't allow anyone else to enter the system, even to trade, for some strange reason

as for the shields, i was thinking to provide some ships for the peacekeepers base on the ones in Independent War 1/2..... which i still have played, but the pics and some stats i found of the Corvette is pretty cool....... if anyone does have the game, please take some screenshots and send them to me or Sprayber if i can't put it up the site before i loose my comp coming weekend....... i plan to massively update the site saturday, don't worry...... just rush rush rush and busy with other things before i leave :P like high school :P

along with those ships, Peacekeepers may have something like shields, but base on the Photon Wave or whatever armor technology. it would help protect the hull of the ship, but won't eminate a bubble field like in startrek and so on.

-LMP

[Frankychan]

I agree w/Sprayber,

The generator to maintain an energy shield would have to be MASSIVE! Like, huge-mungous! I really like the "patchwork-shielding" idea!

So....Sprayber

Trying to drum up support for the Spartan war machine, eh?

Nah, I'm just kidding....I'm really looking forward to all of our collective threads put together in a compendium!

Sprayber, shields is shields :P possible to make smaller less powered version of planetary ones...... if your worried about planetary bombarment, then that could be not allowed in the new sci-fi version of the UN Charter. also, one must be able tp break through many of the spartans defences to even get in orbit of the planet :P so what is the point in making things harder? :P

also, one must be very genocidal and doesn't care of wasting rare habitable worlds just to eliminate the enemy :P

-LMP

[Frankychan]

uh...yeah...one must be genocidal and wasteful in order to eliminate an enemy....uh-huh

[Frankychan]

Sprayber,

I like your post of spreading ionized gas in certain area's to try and find my..err..Hive ships. Never would have thought of that. Anyway, would it be alright if I posted the Hive ambassadors arrival?

[Sprayber]

Go ahead Franky. Sorry for the delay. I came up with that on the spot. It won't be 100% effective though.



Kass: Take a look and see if you can use these. If so just right click and save as on your computer.


http://www.geocities.com/kessel74/Fo...?1011173690060

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by [LordLMP]
Sprayber, shields is shields :P possible to make smaller less powered version of planetary ones...... if your worried about planetary bombarment, then that could be not allowed in the new sci-fi version of the UN Charter. also, one must be able tp break through many of the spartans defences to even get in orbit of the planet :P so what is the point in making things harder? :P

also, one must be very genocidal and doesn't care of wasting rare habitable worlds just to eliminate the enemy :P

-LMP

I'm just trying to get some nice ground combat going in the nice tradition of The Empire Strikes Back. Wasn't it cool that the Empire simply couldn't blast the rebel base from orbit and return before lunch.

I don't think that many of the factions would be paying attention to the UN charter too much when they are spread so far out. The Spartans wouldn't anyway. If they could destroy a city from space, and avoid having to land troops, they wouldn't care too much about what a piece of paper says light years away. They would simply blast every single city and building on a planet. And this is mostly for the benifit of outlying planets and colonies anyway. Can any of the factions afford to spread fleets out to cover all their territories? Syrma may be well defended, but smaller colonies may not be. Sol may be defended, but there may not be a fleet in sight for the protection of Capella. But like I said. If no one wants shields then that is cool with me. Cause the Spartans will be content to invade every small outpost and destroy them in a planet hopping campaign.

[Frankychan]

Ok, there's my post!

Mr. President!

It's good to hear from you again. I like your post. Right now Hive involvement with your planet will be minimal---no military units right now, unless you want a small engagement...?

I kinda wanted messages between us being bounced back and forth, kinda like a "cat-and-mouse" game. What do you think?

[Silence]

Originally posted by [LordLMP]
a religious merceneries? for money? what religion do they believe in? since i have never read the book, i don't know...... if you want religious merceneries.... who have a small or medium size Pirate clan that is mostly comprise of crazy believer undesirables along with others which survives by doing some mercenary work.... i rather not see to many mercenaries groups as at the moment, i don't see much need of them except for simply escorting, raiding others, bounty hunting type mission, garrison, and etc..... depends on the what the mercenary group focuses upon.... Ground Warfare or Space Warfare or whatever.

-LMP

You see in the book the governments of the two worlds the Friendly's live on, use the money to help buy stuff for the planet, and the draftees are a cheaper alternative to the Elite Mercs that people could hire in that univerese. The troops are designed to work in tandem with the hire nation and/or garrison planets while the regulars are out fighting.

[History Guy]

Woah!

Looks like a lot of new posts to read. Looks good everyone.

Silence, perhaps we could do business, eh? Morgan Interstellar has a pretty small army, and if it's to beat InEn, it'll need some help. I think some Soldiers of God will do the trick nicely.

Oh, and by the way, I want to do a post later today in which Marmion speaks to the captured magistrate, wounded soldiers are treated, and Morgan decides to try and get his boys off Callisto.

[Kassiopeia]

I'll look into the new posts. And then I'll probably post. Do not worry Cybergod, the transmission will be received in an orderly fashion.

Originally posted by Sprayber
Kass: Take a look and see if you can use these. If so just right click and save as on your computer.

Thanks!
You even have the two-seated model... *drool*

The Earthforce cap ships seem also appealing. I wish I had the ability to do CG-Imaging.

if your worried about planetary bombarment, then that could be not allowed in the new sci-fi version of the UN Charter

We should allow bombardment of military installations, but civilian targets would be off limits.
Of course, it is for the Spartan Federation's to decide whether to obey the agreement or not.
Also anything like the Ground Delta Zero* command in Star Wars ought to be prohibited.

*the Imperial Navy code for the bombardment of a planet so that it's crust's upper layer turns into molten rock.

[Sprayber]

I just think that if a fleet was pressed for time and didn't really want to go through all the trouble of landing troops and waiting for the ground battle to ensue, they could simply reduce the planet to ruin and move on to the next. You wouldn't even have to carry out the total obliteration of a planet. Just enough to render it sterile. The difference between military targets and civilian ones sometimes blur. What happens with the Spartans whose military and civilian sectors most often are one in the same. even in other factions, every building can be assigned some military value. Generators, life support, production facilities are all fair game. Other consideration may be alien defense. The aliens are under no such treaty restrictions. A well armed alien space fleet could pass through a system and perform independence day attacks with impunity. This whole idea of shields was meant to be a new technology that hasn't been fully developed as of yet. This may not be a concern to Sol who is far frome the Core. Or the Pirates who have no real planetary base. But the Spartans are located at the conjuction of Gorn-Hive-Bree- Unkown space. I think it would be smart to try and develop such technology. But if no one likes shields then we won't have shields.

[Sprayber]

Doesn't anyone find it silly that in Star Trek, you have power for shields on a ship, but the technology doesn't exist for planetary shields? sure some have small shields for blocking transporters but nothing that would help in the defense against fleets. I think there is was one example from TOS in which an advanced race had a type of planatary shield to protect a less advanced race living on the planet. Sure a generating device for a planet would have to be large but there is room to build one on a planet.


For the Spartans this would force a would be attacker to deploy ground troops Which is an area that the Spartans would still be the best at. But then again defenders would have an advantage over attackers in most cases.

[Frankychan]

I think that we should have planetary shields at the most.

It would be suicide if the Spartans did not have some type of defensive mechanism against the Bree.....or Hive I think that I would only be fair if we had some sort of defensive shielding to protect our bases.

As I was thinking of this I began thinking of how Hive bases would be. Since all of our facilities are located below ground, the surface would act as a natural barrier to orbital bombardment. But our bases would also be protected by a slightly less effective shielding than, say, a Spartan city. Just my thoughts though.

History Guy,

Good to hear from you again. I hope I'm not pissing you off with all my Morgan bashing...

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by frankychan
I kinda wanted messages between us being bounced back and forth, kinda like a "cat-and-mouse" game. What do you think?

Sounds like good reading to me! You can see the fleet, but they can't see you and they don't even know who you are. Franco's gonna have to handle your messages on his own, 'cause Fleet Command would never believe his story about a disembodied message.

[Frankychan]

Sorry I forgot to mention some things,

In theory, ban's on things are all fine and dandy. However, when war does break out, treaties and bans seem to evaporate. Bombarding civilian targets may seem like a big no-no but don't put that past Yang. Whatever it takes to subdue the enemy.

Atrocities in war are going to happen, so if a war does break out between factions, I would not be surprised if, say, InEn ships obliterate a Morganite civilian colony or whatever else may occur.

[Frankychan]

Cool,

I was thinking the same thing. Since there are so many things going on with the Hive right now, I was thinking that the Hive commander over there would basically have to think for himself. But I think sooner or later Yang would some people over to investigate Drone activity further.

[Silence]

Actually there are two instances of planetary shieilds in the orignal series.

One of them was on a remote unimportant world, and it had shields that had could shrug off the Enterprises phasers. (which people at Spacebattles.com did the figures, and the weapons from the TOS are actually more powerfull then the other series.)

[Sprayber]

Originally posted by Silence
Actually there are two instances of planetary shieilds in the orignal series.

One of them was on a remote unimportant world, and it had shields that had could shrug off the Enterprises phasers. (which people at Spacebattles.com did the figures, and the weapons from the TOS are actually more powerfull then the other series.)

Yeah, the episode where the Peservers? had set up a colony of Native Americans from earth and had provided a shield to protect them. Also I guess the espisode where the ancient Machine Vaal was located that moderated weather and things in exchange for the primatives had to provide energy.

A substitue for shields on ship could be armour that absorbes and redistributes energy. Kind of like a shield does but the hull of the ship is actually does the work.